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Sr. Director of Engineering Managed PostgreSQL and AI-Native Database Platform
Dive in and do the best work of your career at DigitalOcean. Journey alongside a strong community of top talent who are relentless in their drive to build the simplest scalable cloud. If you have a growth mindset naturally like to think big and bold and are energized by the fast-paced environment of a true industry disruptor you’ll find your place here. We value winning together—while learning having fun and making a profound difference for the dreamers and builders in the world.
We are seeking a Senior Director of Engineering to lead DigitalOcean’s Managed PostgreSQL organization. This leader will own the strategy architecture reliability scalability and long-term evolution of our PostgreSQL offerings and the next generation capabilities that enable developers to build highly scalable data-intensive and AI-native applications.
The ideal candidate will merge sophisticated product vision with technical expertise in distributed systems and the rigorous operational standards required for database management. Your mandate is simple: make DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL trusted for mission-critical workloads today and essential for AI-native builders tomorrow.
What You’ll DoOwn Managed PostgreSQL end-to-endLead the organization responsible for all PostgreSQL editions overseeing availability scalability security and long-term architecture.
Build hyperscaler-grade reliability and operational excellenceEstablish tier-0 reliability standards. Execute against SLIs/SLOs for failover backups and query performance to ensure a high bar for operational excellence.
Scale Advanced Edition into a production-grade platformEvolve the Advanced Edition into a differentiated offering featuring HA architecture consensus-based failover and fast restore capabilities.
Serve large and demanding database customersSupport large-scale workloads (up to 64 TB) with storage scaling read-only nodes and query insights to meet demanding customer needs.
Define the AI-native PostgreSQL strategyIntegrate PostgreSQL with AI workflows via pgvector metadata stores and agent memory positioning it as the core substrate for AI builders.
Build and scale a high-performing engineering organizationBuild a high-performing global organization with strong accountability and technical review mechanisms.
Partner deeply across Product GTM Support SRE Infrastructure and AI/Data teamsTranslate customer needs competitive gaps and market shifts into a coherent engineering roadmap. Work closely with Product and GTM to define packaging migration motions enterprise readiness roadmap sequencing launch quality and customer adoption.
Raise the technical barBe credible in architecture discussions with principal engineers and senior database experts. The role requires enough depth to challenge designs evaluate tradeoffs simplify complexity and prevent the organization from accumulating reliability debt under the cover of roadmap velocity.
What Success Looks LikeKey outcomes within one year:
- PostgreSQL operates as a tier-0 service with measurable reliability gains and improved incident response.
- Advanced Edition has a credible path from preview/early adoption to production-grade readiness for demanding workloads.
- Large customer workloads have clear reference architectures migration paths operational playbooks and escalation mechanisms.
- PostgreSQL has a differentiated AI-native roadmap in addition to pgvector.
- Advanced Edition is production-ready and the technical strategy scales to 64 TB.
- DigitalOcean competes effectively against hyperscalers on price reliability and developer experience.
- 15+ years of engineering experience including significant leadership of cloud infrastructure database storage distributed systems or data platform organizations.
- 6+ years managing managers and leading multi-team engineering organizations.
- Proven experience operating customer-facing high-availability production services with strict reliability durability and incident-management expectations.
- Strong distributed systems foundation: replication consensus failure detection failover consistency partitioning control planes fleet automation and multi-tenant operations.
- Experience with database systems managed database services storage engines query performance backup/restore high availability or large-scale stateful infrastructure.
- Demonstrated ability to define multi-quarter technical strategy and convert it into shipped customer value.
- Strong customer judgment: ability to understand enterprise-grade workload requirements and separate real customer needs from noisy feature requests.
- Executive communication skills; able to represent the business and technical strategy to senior leadership customers partners and GTM teams.
- Deep PostgreSQL experience especially operating PostgreSQL at scale
- Experience with RDS/Aurora AlloyDB Cloud SQL Azure Database for PostgreSQL Neon Crunchy EDB Yugabyte Citus Timescale Supabase or similar PostgreSQL ecosystems.
- Experience building or operating HA architectures using proxies connection poolers consensus systems automated primary election online upgrades and backup/restore pipelines.
- Familiarity with pgvector pgvectorscale hybrid search RAG architectures AI application data patterns and agent memory/state systems.
- Experience scaling databases beyond single-node limits through read scaling sharding distributed SQL storage/compute separation or workload-aware architecture.
- Experience partnering with product and GTM teams to turn platform capabilities into compelling commercial offerings.
- Open-source credibility or strong familiarity with the PostgreSQL ecosystem.
This leader will be accountable for metrics such as:
- Availability failover success rate RTO/RPO backup success rate restore time and data durability.
- Fleet health incident rate change failure rate mean time to detect and mean time to recover.
- Query performance replication lag connection stability noisy-neighbor isolation and scaling workflow success.
- Advanced Edition adoption migration success revenue growth attach rate and retention.
- Large customer onboarding success and reduction in high-severity escalations.
- Engineering execution velocity hiring quality retention and succession depth.
PostgreSQL is no longer just the default relational database for web applications. For AI-native companies it is becoming the operational system of record the metadata layer the agent state store the retrieval companion and often the first place developers want to add vector and AI-aware capabilities.
DigitalOcean has a right to win here only if it is honest about the bar. Developers will forgive missing features before they forgive data loss unreliable failover poor observability or painful scaling. This leader’s job is to make Managed PostgreSQL boringly reliable at the core and strategically ambitious at the edge.
Compensation Range:- $261600.00 - $327000.00
*This is a hybrid role
JR: 2026-7844
#LI-Hybrid
- We innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team you will be a Shark who thinks big bold and scrappy like an owner with a bias for action and a powerful sense of responsibility for customers products employees and decisions.
- We prioritize career development. At DO you’ll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our organizational development team will provide you with resources to ensure you keep growing. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences training and education. All employees have access to LinkedIn Learning's 10000+ courses to support their continued growth and development.
- We care about your well-being. Regardless of your location we will provide you with a competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy to name a few. While the philosophy around our benefits is the same worldwide specific benefits may vary based on local regulations and preferences.
- We reward our employees. The salary range for this position is based on market data relevant years of experience and skills. You may qualify for a bonus in addition to base salary; bonus amounts are determined based on company and individual performance. We also provide equity compensation to eligible employees including equity grants upon hire and the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program.
- DigitalOcean is an equal-opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race religion color ancestry national origin caste sex sexual orientation gender gender identity or expression age disability medical condition pregnancy genetic makeup marital status or military service.
Application Limit: You may apply to a maximum of 3 positions within any 180-day period. This policy promotes better role-candidate matching and encourages thoughtful applications where your qualifications align most strongly.
Skills Required
- 15+ years of engineering experience including leadership of cloud infrastructure database storage distributed systems or data platform organizations.
- 6+ years managing managers and leading multi-team engineering organizations.
- Proven experience operating customer-facing high-availability production services with strict reliability durability and incident-management expectations.
- Strong distributed systems foundation: replication consensus failure detection failover consistency partitioning control planes fleet automation and multi-tenant operations.
- Experience with database systems managed database services storage engines query performance backup/restore high availability or large-scale stateful infrastructure.
- Demonstrated ability to define multi-quarter technical strategy and convert it into shipped customer value.
- Strong customer judgment: understand enterprise-grade workload requirements and prioritize real customer needs.
- Executive communication skills; represent business and technical strategy to senior leadership customers partners and GTM teams.
- Deep PostgreSQL experience especially operating PostgreSQL at scale.
- Experience with RDS/Aurora AlloyDB Cloud SQL Azure Database for PostgreSQL Neon Crunchy EDB Yugabyte Citus Timescale Supabase or similar ecosystems.
- Experience building or operating HA architectures using proxies connection poolers consensus systems automated primary election online upgrades and backup/restore pipelines.
- Familiarity with pgvector pgvectorscale hybrid search RAG architectures AI application data patterns and agent memory/state systems.
- Experience scaling databases via read scaling sharding distributed SQL storage/compute separation or workload-aware architecture.
- Experience partnering with product and GTM teams to turn platform capabilities into commercial offerings.
- Open-source credibility or strong familiarity with the PostgreSQL ecosystem.
What the Team is Saying
DigitalOcean Compensation & Benefits Highlights
- Healthcare Strength—Health coverage is described as market‑leading across medical dental vision and mental‑health with company‑paid life and income‑protection. This positions core healthcare and protection benefits as a standout element of the package.
- Parental & Family Support—Parental leave is characterized as above‑average frequently highlighted alongside a phased return‑to‑work program. This indicates strong support for new parents beyond baseline policies.
- Equity Value & Accessibility—The package includes recurring equity grants and access to an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. This provides meaningful ownership opportunities alongside cash compensation.
DigitalOcean Insights
What We Do
DigitalOcean is the Inference Cloud — a full-stack production-ready cloud platform built to run AI applications with predictable performance sustainable economics and radically simpler operations at scale. We are built for teams turning AI into real products — not just training models. Our advantage is not fewer features but fewer failure modes when operating AI at scale — combining minimal operational overhead predictable cost efficiency and a full-stack cloud that works as a system. Hyperscalers are broad by design. Neoclouds are infrastructure-first. DigitalOcean is inference-first — with a real cloud underneath. It combines inference-optimized compute managed inference software and integrated cloud capabilities that reduce operational burden for teams running real workloads. Inference is the foundation—not the boundary. Everything else builds on top of it.
Why Work With Us
At DO we do career-defining work. We innovate with AI and build cutting-edge tech. Our rewards to match that intensity - to motivate you recognize your impact and give you what you need to thrive. If you have a growth mindset like to think big and bold and are energized by the fast-paced environment you'll find your place here.
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Employees work remotely.
We commit to both remote work and in-person collaboration. These ways of working are dependent on specific roles and are mutually agreed upon by employees. In the US we are mainly remote. In our APAC locations we have a hybrid in-office approach.
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